Inmate Demetrius Carroll dances during a class led by teacher Sylvie Minot at the San Francisco County Jail on July 17, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Sylvie Minot leads dance classes inside the SF County Jail to help bring inmates inner peace. Minot also leads classes for the public in Marin, and for vets at the VA clinic.

Shoes are placed on the floor during an "ecstatic" dance class by teacher Sylvie Minot at the San Francisco County Jail on July 17, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Sylvie Minot leads dance classes inside the SF County Jail to help bring inmates inner peace. Minot also leads classes for the public in Marin, and for vets at the VA clinic.

Inmates dance during a class led by teacher Sylvie Minot at the San Francisco County Jail on July 17, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Sylvie Minot leads dance classes inside the SF County Jail to help bring inmates inner peace. Minot also leads classes for the public in Marin, and for vets at the VA clinic.

"This is not your typical dance class," she says, as the five women fidget in identical orange outfits.

Minot presses a button on the mini iPod strapped to her wrist, and a heavy bongo beat fills the tiny room. The inmates move their feet at first, roll their shoulders, and then give in to their bodies and move their hips, arms and heads in a coveted moment of freedom.

For the past four years, Minot, 50, and her Syzygy Dance Project have been bringing meditative dance to incarcerated women, to ex-soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder at veterans' hospitals, to addicts inside recovery centers, and to young people at camps for at-risk youth, helping them use physical energy and movement to overcome anger, stress and self-doubt.

With the help of her wife, Wendy Heffner, Minot works with 20 volunteers and leads six different Syzygy movement classes a week. For the past 10 years, she has taught a 7 p.m. Wednesday Syzygy class for the public in the Martin Luther King Middle School gym in Sausalito. She receives no funding for the jail program, using door fees from her Marin regulars to pay for it.

Releasing anger

"When I dance with the inmates, it just opens my heart," said Minot, who came to dance two decades ago as a way to overcome her own struggles with alcohol and to help her release an anger she carried since childhood. That anger started when her father, a general in the Lao Army, died in a concentration camp in North Vietnam, and she was she was forced to flee a posh home two blocks from the presidential palace in Saigon with her mother and older sister. Minot grew up in overcrowded apartments in Singapore, the Philippines, France and finally Sunnyvale.

"I work from a place of survival," Minot said. "I couldn't feel anger until I started dancing."

Minot incorporates the worldwide 5Rhythms spiritual dance practice that was pioneered by Gabrielle Roth of San Francisco in the late '70s at the Esalen spiritual center in Big Sur, which puts the body in motion to still the mind. What may look like random dancing is actually a carefully orchestrated crescendo of tempos set by the DJ and followed by dancers as they move through a "wave" of five dance energies: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness.

There are no steps to follow, but Minot inserts exercises into the hour-long class, always connected to a life skill. This evening, the theme is support.

"What do you need support for?" Minot asked the group.

"Finding my freedom!" dancer Tasha Anderson answered.

"What does freedom look like as a movement?" Minot asked.

Challenging exercise

Anderson waved both hands in the air like she was at a rock concert.

"What stands in the way of your freedom?" Minot asked her.

"Jail," she said, lifting two fists in front of her face like a person holding onto bars.

"Who supports you in finding your freedom?"

"My friends and family," Anderson said.

Minot placed Anderson at one corner of the room and positioned a second dancer facing her, holding bars to represent jail. Then she placed two inmates holding hands to represent friends and family next in line, and a fourth inmate waved her hands in the air at the end of the line to represent freedom. Then she turned on the music and had Anderson dance her way through the human barriers.

Anderson laughed as she grooved through her confinement, but later said the exercise had been challenging.

"Dancing definitely helps me get through any problems I'm having, but sometimes I feel what I have to work through is so big, I get discouraged," she said.

Minot said even that is progress. Just to give people an idea that there's another way to face their demons - and release them without being self-destructive - is offering a bit of hope.

"After Tuesday dance class, it sets me up for the week. I feel like I am better able to let things go that are bothering me," said inmate Marisabela Sarria.

Ignoring negativity

Demetrius Carroll said it's easy to get caught up in petty disagreements that can swirl around the tight confines of the jail, but dancing calms her down.

"I can ignore negativity more easily," she said. "Plus, I'm just too tired to deal with it!"